Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 9, Number 47, DeMotte, Jasper County, 12 October 1939 — Butter Is Tax Payment Medium For Natives of Isolated Tibet [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Butter Is Tax Payment Medium For Natives of Isolated Tibet

World's Loftiest State Has Queer Religious Ceremonies. Prepared by National Geographic Society. Washington, D. C.-WNU Service “Dead Lama Causes Yak Butter Crisis” is the burden of news from faraway Tibet, And what, it may be asked, has a lama—dead or alive —got to do with the price of butter? As much as Christmas has to do with the price of fir trees, or Easter with the egg market. For Tibet, the isolated land of “Shangri-la,” is a theocracy ruled by the high priest of Lamaism, and Lamaism uses yak butter where other governments use gold braid, precious metals, and fireworks. Especially in the ceremonies and gatherings occasioned by the death of a prominent lama, butter is in such demand that the price soars and the market is panicked. The most recent economic difficulty resulted from the prolonged ceremonies over the body of the late. Panchen Lama, second in authority to the supreme Dalai Lama. On the high cold plateaus of the world’s loftiest state, the Tibetans follow the Lamaistic faith of Buddhism which discourages slaughter of either man or beast. Instead of eating meat, which is abundant in vast herds of sheep, goats, and cattle crossed with yak, they balance their meager diet of barley bread and tea by consuming quantities Qf butter. Servants Use Goat Butter. The Tibetan social scale could be measured by a butter barometer. Butter from the milk of sheep and goats is rejected by all except servants, and some of it can be slipped into the butter bags contributed to the government as taxes. Butter from yak milk, however, is a food of prestige. The wealthy and the officials in Tibet can dine sumptuously after

TIBETS (rIFT to America is a few specimens of the giant panda. A cub panda arriving in this country for placement in a i\ew York zoo is shown in the picture above. These animals are very rare and live in the most inaccessible regions of Tibet. Zoo goers have made them a favorite for the animals' antics resemble that of a huge, live "'teddy bear.'' the Chinese fashion, on varied foods imported over mountain passes two miles above sea level. Valley dwellers in fertile mountain-sheltered pockets have home-grown vegetables and even fruits. But the poorer Tibetans, especially on the unbroken grasslands of the north, subsist on butter kneaded into firmness, carried about in woolly bags of sheepskin for several years. They eat it mixed with parched barley flour. They drink it in their tea. They rub it on their bodies as a substitute for bathing in long seasons of cold and drouth. They give it as a delicacy to their wiry hard-working little horses. They include it in the tribute they pay to the government. They use it as lubrication on the single-rope bridges on which they slide in dangling slings across the gorges of their icy mountain torrents. But Tibet is the country where you eat your butter and burn it too. Butter lamps are as essential to the ritual of the Tibetan churches as candles are to other religions. In the felt-topped hut of the northern nomad, a tiny butter lamp flickers before the little family shrine blackened with greasy smoke. Of silver, copper, or humble earthenware—some stemmed like champagne glasses—the butter lamps appear beside the bowls of holy water on ev-

LJAD OF “SHANGRI-LA.” Map shows the location of lofty, mysterious Tibet. Portions of the country are practically inaccessible and as a result weird tales of life in the interior are told by adventurers. The Tibetans follow the Lamaistic faith of Buddhism, which has ceremonies and practices appearing queer to an outside world and this fact gives rise to many of the stories. ery Tibetan church altar. Yak butter and incense are the chief offering® a Tibetan carries to church. Butter is part of the payment to a lama for services or exorcisms performed in the home. This food staple is doubly valuable to the Tibetan priesthood, which comprises about one-seventh of Tibet’s population and must five on the food produced by the other sixsevenths. Made Without Churns. Wives of the yak herders make butter without churns, dayold milk in leather bags until the yellow lumps form. It is pressed into pats by hand.. Its first acquaintance with a churn may come with tea, for Tibetans churn their hqrd-boiled tea with butter and salt until the soupy mixture resepnbles hot chocolate. Crowning its year-round service for countless everyday uses, gutter becomes the center of attraction at the Tibetan whnter religious festival which combines many features of Christmas, New Year’s, and the Fourth of July. Instead of fireworks, there is an art show of butter ture, staged by the lamaseries. For four months in advance there is a rush on the butter market, as the lamas famous for their talent as molders collect materials in the cold workrooms of their respective lamaseries. The butter is mixed with powdered pigments, to give as (nany as 20 vivid colors for the sculptor to use.